“What the hell are you doing?” Davis protested. “Trust me,” Willis said.
He reached the ground level, pulling back just before the Wessex struck dirt.
“Good girl,” he whispered to the dashboard. “Hold steady.”
She’d been his favourite helicopter to fly throughout his career. Although retired, the early days of the virus saw all of the newer vehicles freed up for more important work. The Chamber was left with the job of securing this old Westland Wessex, and Willis had had little difficulty in doing so, regardless of the legality. Like many other intangible constructs that society built up, property rights fell by the wayside when things got bad.
Of course in his short time with The Chamber, Willis had learned that this was a project well used to operating outside of the law. The law was for the likes of those poor bastards down below, the masses, the subordinates. The Chamber knew no such boundaries.
“Come on,” Willis urged. “You can see us! Come on!”
He was almost level with the dead, now. Close enough to see the whites of their eyes, as the old saying went.
Those at the back of the crowd were turning towards him. Some believed their senses were dulled with the virus. But they could certainly feel the vibrations coming off the Wessex’s propellers, the gust of wind that beat upon their drawn faces.
Slowly but surely, the dead at the rear of the crowd became curious. They began to move towards the helicopter. Soon, the dead at the front began to follow, losing interest in the destructive hail of bullets in favour of the more interesting vibrations from the helicopter.
Willis backed away as they came towards him, careful not to allow them too close, lest the circulating air force them off their feet. He continued to inch back as they approached.
“Base, you’re clear to mend the fence. I’m drawing the crowd away. It should get lighter up front.”
Pzzt. Roger that. Pzzt.
The bodies moved closer to the windscreen, some falling back with the force of wind from the propellers. Willis pulled back, gently encouraging the poor bastards to follow him.
He could see the soldiers behind the fence moving in to carry out the reinforcement work. Willis held the helicopter steady.
The work was done swiftly, the welders pulling back, replaced again by men with guns.
Pzzt. Base to Wessex. You’re clear to land. Nice work on drawing those fuckers away. Pzzt.
Willis looked to the co-pilot and exhaled.
“Roger that, base,” he said.
The two pilots moved through the outer buildings of the Mahon Road Army camp, finding a staircase leading down towards an underground part of the complex.
The closeness of the air hit him as they descended the stairs. It was the distinct aroma of sweaty men. They had been afforded some freedom from this smell in the helicopter. Now it seemed stronger than ever.
They reached the bottom of the staircase, moving along a short corridor.
They entered the control room.
This was the main base of operations for The Chamber and where most of the soldiers now assembled. One wall was covered with monitors. A line of computers faced the monitors, several men sitting at them. The computers were older models yet still seemed to work okay. In fact, everything was dated down here, as if in descending the staircase, Willis and Davis had stepped back in time.
Everything was dirty, too. Sleeping bags and old clothes littered the floor. Cans of beer and ashtrays surrounded each workstation. It seemed wrong: these were soldiers; they should be disciplined, organised.
A fifty-something veteran, Wills hailed from the old school. He’d joined the army over thirty years before, with a half-baked desire for action and excitement, clueless as to what else he could do with his life. A stint in the Falklands War had him rethinking his choice of career; his time in Northern Ireland left him completely disillusioned. But he stuck with it, nonetheless, perhaps spurred on by friends and family back home in Manchester who saw him as something of a hero.
But Willis didn’t feel like a hero. And in all the time he’d spent in the army, he’d never met one. War was no place for heroes.
His own role had rarely involved being in the thick of it, action-wise. He always felt protected inside his metal bird, but the people he transported weren’t as fortunate.
He would drop them off close to whatever mission or riot or assignment they were tasked with. The sounds of the fight would surround him, muted due to the ever-spinning blades of his aircraft.
Willis would see the looks of those men as they sat in the back of the helicopter, some of them younger than his own two boys back home. He would smell their fear, damp and heavy like rain clouds. And then he would release them, only to return some hours or days later, often to find the same men on stretchers, their own lust for action brutally realised. To Willis, that was the worst part of his job—seeing their eyes again, sometimes living, sometimes dead as they were placed back in the helicopter, looking towards him as if to say, you brought me here and left me to die.
And now, there was nothing but death around him. The dead filled the world like ghosts, haunting him. Reminding him of all the men he’d carried to hell and back.
Willis entered the control room, loosening the catch of his helmet and pulled it off. He ran one hand through his thick, grey hair.
One of the men looked up and nodded as he entered. Willis guessed it was the soldier he’d been talking to on the comms. None of the others so much as acknowledged him, never mind bothering to ask how today’s recon went. It didn’t matter. Nothing mattered when you were drinking and carrying on like most of this lot.
Another man entered from the other side of the room. His name was Connor Jackson. He was meant to be the Commanding Officer of The Chamber yet seemed every bit as dishevelled as his subordinates.
Major Jackson had replaced the Colonel after the old man fell ill. The Colonel was no angel, by any stretch of the imagination, but he’d a certain candour about him that endeared Willis. Jackson was just a lethargic and drunken old bastard. An evil bastard at that.
This wasn’t Jackson’s first time in this complex. He’d been CO here before, back in the bad old days, when The Chamber acted as the British government’s post-internment interrogation facility.
On transferring to The Chamber’s team in June, Willis had made it his business to find out as much as he could about what went on. He accessed files without clearance. Read things not meant for his eyes. Even after thirty odd years of service, taking in deployment in both Northern Ireland and the Falklands, what he read in those files shocked him to his very core.
And Jackson’s name was prominent.
His most notorious work involved the interrogation of an IRA operative by the name of Pat Flynn. Flynn was privy to information The Chamber needed. When Flynn refused to talk, even resisting Gallagher’s most excruciating powers of persuasion, Jackson had murdered the man’s young son in cold blood.
Willis found a chair at the back of the room and sat himself down.
Jackson looked to the front wall of the control room, where a large wall screen was mounted. It was playing footage from the various surveillance cameras The Chamber had hidden around Belfast and surrounding areas.
“What’s going on, Private?” Jackson said to one of the men, pointing to the screen.
But the Private was lost in the bottle, a shambles of his former self. He offered nothing sensible in reply.
Jackson pulled up a chair beside another man, started drinking.
The soldier next to the Major announced merrily that he was taking bets on a number of situations playing out on screen.
Willis looked to the screen, watching a man with a cricket bat tackle a crowd of dead in Castlecourt Shopping Centre. Those men sober enough to make sense of the screen were jeering along, waving makeshift betting slips.
“What are these?” the Major asked, ignoring the revelry and pointing to the screens, retrieving his glasses to get a bett
er look.
“Surveillance cameras,” replied one of the soldiers. “Yes I can see that, Private,” Jackson snapped. “But where are they watching and why?”
Dr Miles Gallagher entered the room, his yellow plastic suit covered in blood. He spent most of his time in The Chamber’s interrogation rooms, where he’d set up a makeshift research lab. Willis shivered, wondering just what type of research the good doctor was involved in.
The men quieted somewhat as the doctor made his entrance.
Gallagher filled the Major in on the locations of the cameras and the work their footage related to: old cases that The Chamber had been working on prior to everything going south. One of the cameras focused on an apartment block in Finaghy, just south of Belfast.
Willis remembered reading about the case.
Brigita Fico, an illegal immigrant working within a prostitution ring in Belfast. Her flat was under surveillance by The Chamber as part of their contract with the Home Office. Brigita was quite the stunner, and Willis wondered, as he read, how someone so beautiful could get caught up in something so ugly.
“Good God,” Jackson said. “Did you see that?” Willis looked back to the screen.
They homed in on one of the bedrooms in the Fico flat.
“There’s someone moving inside there,“ Jackson said.
“Probably one of the dead, sir,” Gallagher countered. “No, look closer,” Jackson countered.
Willis watched as a small shadow appeared in the room, scurrying across the floor to retrieve something unrecognisable. The image was captured, refocused and enlarged.
It looked like a child.
Gallagher looked up, more interested now. “A survivor?”
“Has to be,” Jackson said. “Moving too fast to be one of the dead.”
Willis quietly lifted his smart phone, tipping its screen subtly at his desk to film the footage playing onscreen. He held the phone steady, praying that nobody would turn around and question him, that everyone’s eyes would remain glued to the screen.
An expectant silence fell upon the room.
“We have to find out more,” Jackson said, finally. “Where’s Willis?” He looked around the room. “Could have sworn I just saw him...”
Willis pulled his phone down just as Jackson’s eyes fell upon him.
“Ah, there you are. Gonna need you in the air again, soldier.”
“Yes sir,” Willis said, sliding the phone into his pocket.
“I want you to check out that apartment block in Finaghy,” Jackson continued. “Preliminary surveillance run. I want to know how many infected are in and around the building, if there are any more survivors there, and what the best way to enter the building might be. Clear?”
“Clear, sir,” Willis replied.
“And maintain full radio contact throughout the run.”
“Roger that, sir.”
Willis pulled himself to his feet, looking around the room for Davis, his co-pilot.
His mind returned to the phone, now hidden in his pocket. He’d check the footage later when he was on his own. He hoped it would be clear enough. But right now, he needed to get back in the air and check that building out. A survivor within a quarantined flat: the possibilities such could present were immeasurable.
He smiled to himself as he made his way back through the building.
This was big.
Tom was going to love it.
CHAPTER FOUR
Waringstown, County Down
The long wooden box sat at the back of his wardrobe, and Martin hadn’t as much as touched it in twenty years. Dust seemed ingrained into the wood now, its once vivid blue having given way to a dull grey. Its lock showed signs of rust; the hinges browned at the edges.
Martin pulled the box out, lifting it from the wardrobe and setting it on the bed.
His back was straining, perhaps more due to his age than how heavy the object was. He straightened, rubbing his spine.
For a minute, Martin simply stood looking at the box. It brought back a number of memories—days that he was glad had passed, dangerous days in active service in strange lands.
A single parent, Martin had often left his daughter in the care of friends, colleagues and neighbours. Sometimes those people wouldn’t speak English as their first language, and a thought crossed Martin’s mind.
Is that why she went for the dummy?
A man whose sparingly-used voice was less obtuse than the German or French or Algerian that her ears would have heard so much as a child.
Martin fumbled in his pocket, finding the bunch of keys that he always carried. He thumbed along the key ring until he found the smallest key then used it to open the padlock on the wooden box.
He opened the lid to uncover an old double-barrelled shotgun.
It was his unit’s gift to him as he left active service: Something to remember us by, they’d said.
How could he forget?
There was movement out in the hall.
“Daddy?”
It was Lize.
He took another look at the gun.
“Just a minute,” he said.
“No, Daddy, come quick.”
Martin made his way through to the landing. Her bedroom door was open, and she stood by the window, looking out.
“What’s wrong? What is it?”
“Down there,” she said.
Martin joined her by the window. Lize pointed down onto the road in front of the house, where a single figure stood.
“Isn’t that Mr Gracy?” she asked.
If it were Gracy, Martin surmised, then Gracy was dead.
They’d encountered the dead already, of course. And each time, Martin was insistent that the survivors lie perfectly still and quiet until they moved on. But today he was angry. Today he wanted to show them what they would get if they kept coming here and threatening his family.
“Stay here,” he said to Lize.
“Daddy, where are you going?”
“Where’s Jamie?”
“Don’t know. Maybe downstairs with Shaun?”
“Well, you just stay here.”
“Daddy?”
Martin returned to the wooden box in his bedroom. He lifted the gun from the case, wiping it down with a handkerchief from his bedside table drawer. He found a box of ammo underneath it. There were only two cartridges left inside. He inserted both into the gun and snapped it closed.
Lize was at the door.
“Daddy?” she said. “Where are you going with that?”
“I told you to stay in the room.”
He pushed past her, descending the stairs. He found Shaun and Jamie in the living room.
“Jamie,” Martin said, “Go upstairs to your mother.” Shaun looked up at him, went to say something, but Martin ignored him and moved through to the kitchen. The front door was boarded up, so the side door leading into the garage remained the only way outside. Martin entered the garage, locking the door behind him, sealing his family into the house.
He sat the shotgun against the wall, unlocked the garage door and pulled it open.
Martin retrieved the gun and ducked under the partially opened door. Moved out into the yard, towards the front of the house.
He found Jack Gracy standing in the middle of the road, his head twisted, eyes fixed on some unknown spot across the fields. He almost looked alive, and for a moment, Martin doubted himself.
“Jack?”
Gracy seemed to notice him, turning.
“Jack, are you okay?”
But Jack was far from okay. As he turned his head, Martin noticed a slice of skin hanging from his face like dried up wallpaper. His lips were partially removed, as if one side of his face had been burned. His eyes were grey, the pupils invisible.
Martin wasted no time in dealing with Gracy. He raised the shotgun, took aim, then pulled the hammer back and fired. The blast took most of Gracy’s head away. The dead man spun on his feet, falling. His body lay twitching on the ground.
He turned sharply, finding Lize at the upstairs window, screaming and pointing.
“Get away from there,” he shouted at her.
“Daddy, there’s more of them!”
Martin turned quickly, finding an empty road stretching out to fields on either side. The sun was behind the trees, shadows cloaking the road.
Where are they?!
He heard a shuffle from his right. Something moved in the shade of the trees. More commotion, this time on his left.
“Show yourselves, you bastards!” Martin growled.
His shotgun moved from left to right, trying to lock in on a target. A light wind unsettled some branches and Martin pointed the gun in their direction, eyes searching.
“Daddy, get back inside!” came Lize’s voice from the window again.
He started to step backwards, gun still primed, eyes still busy searching.
Something stepped out from the shade, and Martin fired immediately, his shaking hands upsetting his normally good aim to clip the thing’s shoulder. It fell back with the impact, lying for some moments before getting up again. Its arm was hanging by sinews, blood rushing from the wound.
“Jesus Christ,” Martin muttered, just as yet another one stepped into view to his left.
He raised the gun, before realising it was empty. He brought his aim down.
Several other bodies were closing in on him from the right, their infernal sniffs and grunts loud and obnoxious. Martin swore loudly.
Damn stupid coming out like this! What was he thinking?!
He turned tail and ran back towards the garage, stooping under the partially opened door. He rested the gun against the wall. Closed the door down quickly. Locked it, his jittering hands struggling with the mechanism, then checking twice to make sure it was tight.
Martin lifted his gun again, moved through the garage, into the kitchen, pausing to lock the door leading to the garage from the inside. He stared at the locked door, decided to lean a chair from the table against the door handle.
He moved past Shaun, taking Jamie by the hand and leading him upstairs to Lize. The child started to weep, running to the arms of his mother, Lize’s own eyes damp as she embraced him.
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